Midnight, 1954. A striking woman in a torn black dress slinks down a cobwebbed, candelabra'd corridor. She stops, shrieks hysterically into the camera, then solemnly says, "Good evening, I am Vampira." Her real name is Maila Nurmi and she was the first in a long line of television horror movie hosts, commonly seen on independent stations' late-night "grade Z" offerings dressed as some zany ghoul or mad scientist. This book covers the major hosts in detail, along with styles and show themes. Merchandise tie-in and fan reactions are also chronicled. The appendices list film and record credits.

Midnight, 1954. A striking woman in a torn black dress slinks down a cobwebbed, candelabra'd corridor. She stops, shrieks hysterically into the camera, then solemnly says, "Good evening, I am Vampira." Her real name is Maila Nurmi and she was the first in a long line of television horror movie hosts, commonly seen on independent stations' late-night "grade Z" offerings dressed as some zany ghoul or mad scientist. This book covers the major hosts in detail, along with styles and show themes. Merchandise tie-in and fan reactions are also chronicled. The appendices list film and record credits.

In October 1957, Screen Gems made numerous horror movies available to local television stations around the country as part of a package of films called Shock Theater. These movies became a huge sensation with TV viewers, as did the horror hosts who introduced the films and offered insight--often humorous--into the plots, the actors, and the directors. This history of hosted horror walks readers through the best TV horror films, beginning with the 1930s black-and-white classics from Universal Studios and ending with the grislier color films of the early 1970s. It also covers and explores the horror hosts who presented them, some of whom faded into obscurity while others became iconic within the genre.

From Vampira to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, female horror movie hosts have long been a staple of late-night television. Broadcast on local stations and cable access channels, characters such as Moona Lisa, Stella, Crematia Mortem and Tarantula Ghoul brought an entertaining blend of macabre camp and after-prime-time sexuality to American living rooms in the 1950s through 1990s. Despite a near total lack of local programming today, the tradition continues on the Internet and Roku and other modern media. Featuring exclusive interviews and rare photographs, this book covers dozens of "dream ghouls" with alphabetical entries, from Aunt Gertie to Veronique Von Venom.

John Stanley, who hosted Creature Features in the San Francisco-Bay Area for six years (1979-84) introduced old horror and science fiction movies on late-night programming. This title provides 559 photos, Stanley's exclusive interview material to describe such leading players as Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner and Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek.

By the last 1950s, studios saw television as a convenient dumping ground for thousands of films that had been gathering dust in their vaults. Distributors grouped them by genre-- and Chicago's tradition of TV horror movie shows was born. From giant grasshoppers to Dracula epics, Okuda and Yurkiw take a comprehensive look at these programs, with career profiles of the "horror hosts," a look at the politics behind the shows, and broadcast histories, as well as guides to many of the films themselves.

Horror is a universally popular, pervasive TV genre, with shows like True Blood, Being Human, The Walking Dead and American Horror Story making a bloody splash across our television screens. This complete, utterly accessible, sometimes scary new book is the definitive work on TV horror. It shows how this most adaptable of genres has continued to be a part of the broadcast landscape, unsettling audiences and pushing the boundaries of acceptability. The authors demonstrate how TV Horror continues to provoke and terrify audiences by bringing the monstrous and the supernatural into the home, whether through adaptations of Stephen King and classic horror novels, or by reworking the gothic and surrealism in Twin Peaks and Carnivale. They uncover horror in mainstream television from procedural dramas to children's television and, through close analysis of landmark TV auteurs including Rod Serling, Nigel Kneale, Dan Curtis and Stephen Moffat, together with case studies of such shows as Dark Shadows, Dexter, Pushing Daisies, Torchwood, and Supernatural, they explore its evolution on television. This book is a must-have for those studying TV Genre as well as for anyone with a taste for the gruesome and the macabre.

Lock your doors and gather close . . . if you dare! Once a rising TV journalist, Jerri Bartman has returned to her small Midwest hometown station. Demoted to hosting the nightly Creature Feature, Jerri's professional humiliation is eclipsed by the discovery that her new job comes with a secret, supernatural duty. Her missing predecessor, Count Crowley, was one of the last "Appointed" hunters of monsters. Yes. Monsters. They're real and they're hell bent on controlling the news and information consumed by humans. Everything we've ever been taught about monsters is a lie and Jerri's only possible advisor is a senile male chauvinist. It's 1983 and the outlook for humanity is getting . . . gnarly and their only hope is an alcoholic, acerbic horror host from Missouri. David Dastmalchian's authorial comics debut with artist Lukas Ketner--this terrifying trade collects issues #1-#4 of the Dark Horse Comics series Count Crowley: Reluctant Midnight Monster Hunter!

From December 1957 through October 1959, Chicago TV viewers were held in thrall by "Marvin," the ghoulishly hilarious host of WBKB-TV's late-night horror film series Shock Theatre. Marvin and his lady friend "Dear" (her face ever hidden from the camera) introduced thousands of Chicagoland youngsters to such classic Universal chillers as Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolf Man. This history of Shock Theatre focuses on the series and its creator, Marvin himself--in real life, the multi-talented Terry Bennett, whose wife Joy played "Dear." Terry's son Kerry Bennett provides an affectionate foreword, while celebrated horror host Count Gore De Vol (Dick Dyszel) supplies the afterword. Included are dozens of photos and vintage advertisement reproductions, as well as two appendices featuring a resume of Terry Bennett's career and a list of films telecast during his two-year Shock Theatre run.

This Second Edition offers so much more - More of Southern California's historic horrorhosts - Including a newly discovered undocumented horror host, over 20 full scripts, morephotos along with more newspaper press releases and articles - 550 pages of SouthernCalifornia horror host history and all in a larger format.Jeepers Creepers Theatre in 1962 ignited a love of horror hosts that was the beginning of alife-long addiction for the author and many fans. But as much as the audience loved theshows, they never knew the horror that occurred off-screen -- live adult stage performances,lawsuits and cutthroat competition. What started off as risqué and sexy by 1954 standardsended as risqué and sexy by 1984 standards. Horror hosts affected 30 years of SouthernCalifornia television history... a phenomenon that is not known by today's generation butwell remembered by the "Baby Boomers" and now chronicled for future generationsInside this Second Edition, you will find over 300 images, many never published before -studio and behind the scenes photos, TV Guide ads, movie listings by date, scans of fullscripts, interviews with the hosts and writers and identities of the hosts revealed for thefirst time. Many you've seen on other TV series and movies and didn't even know.